


every man is an island/no man is an island

by feminist14er



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5731093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feminist14er/pseuds/feminist14er
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy carries on when Clarke leaves. (a coda to "tell me despair, yours")</p>
            </blockquote>





	every man is an island/no man is an island

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really interested in Bellamy's psyche while Clarke is gone, so have another piece about that (that will be undoubtedly thrown out the window this coming week). Tied into "tell me despair, yours", this goes through about the first half of that work. I might write a second half, or I might not, depending on how close it gets to Thursday. Title from Noah Gunderson's "Nashville" and Ben Howard's "Black Flies".

He watches her walk away slowly, every second hoping that she’ll turn around, come back, walk inside. He watches until she reaches the treeline, and she never even so much as turns around. Her head is down, her steps measured, and as in all things, he thinks her backbone is made of steel.

When he can’t see her anymore, he goes inside.

(he wants nothing more than to follow her, or at the very least, to disappear to somewhere else. he knows, though, that she’d never forgive him, and whatever grudges he might hold against her in the coming months, he wants her forgiveness, too. wants her to believe in him.)

He holds his head high, even as he bears their combined burden. He refuses to bow under the weight, no matter how alone he feels at this moment.

\--

Abby is too weak to do much more than glare at him, moisture collecting in the corners of her eyes when he tells her.

(he tells her quickly, like ripping off a bandage. he doesn’t feel badly. he heard what she said to Clarke, and it might be that he blames her for adding to Clarke’s self-doubt.)

Kane watches the interaction from his seat next to Abby’s bed, his eyebrows drawn together. “Did she say anything about where she’s going? What she intends to do?”

Bellamy looks over at him, considers him briefly. Kane is a wild card, but he thinks it’s possible that finally, he and the remaining hundred have earned his attention, and more importantly, his respect. “No.”

Kane raises an eyebrow. “Would you tell us if she had told you?”

Bellamy shrugs. “I don’t know. But she didn’t tell me, so you don’t have to wonder about my loyalties.”

(his loyalties are to his people, and Clarke is still one of them, but he has forty-six others now, and he _will_ take care of them. she told him to, and that is the care he can guarantee her now.)

\--

He tells Raven, Wick at her side; he tells Monty, when he finally finds him at the fire, alone. Bellamy looks him over, then goes to grab a blanket for him. When he comes back, Harper’s sitting next to him, so he grabs another for Harper.

When he tells Monty, he looks up at him, distress clear in his eyes. “Why did she leave us?”

Bellamy weighs his answer before answering. Monty is perhaps one of the most generous people he’s ever met, someone with a large heart, one that gives and gives. He supported Clarke unfailingly, and Clarke has abandoned him.

(it occurs to Bellamy for the first time that it wasn’t just he and Clarke who made their decision, it isn’t just the two of them “together” – Monty bears this burden too, and Bellamy’s heart feels the added weight of this stone; it somehow feels heavier than the others).

Monty keeps watching him, and Bellamy isn’t sure what Monty thinks of his prolonged silence. Finally, he settles on, “She needed time.”

Harper looks up at Bellamy then, and her face is mistrustful. “What does that mean?”

Bellamy sighs, scrubs his hands through his hair. “She’s taking some time away from camp. That’s all I know.”

He’s getting ready to turn away when Monty asks in a small voice, “Does she blame me?”

(that’s the first time Bellamy feels anger toward Clarke at her decision).

“No, Monty. She asked you to do what you did. You did what you had to, what we asked you to do. It was necessary.” He doesn’t look back to see their reaction.

He doesn’t tell anyone else after that, and maybe he’s a coward, but he can’t have another conversation like that tonight. The entire day, week, _month_ , has been too much, and he needs to sleep.

He has too many people relying on him to fail.

\--

It’s as he’s trying to fall asleep that night that truly feels _alone_. He’s been sleeping in air vents, running from the guards in Mt. Weather, hiding from his people and the Grounders; he’s been alone for days, but for the first time it hits him that he’s now a man apart from the rest of them. He’s been leading them since they landed, but he’s doing by himself now, their wishes, hopes, and nightmares pinned to him and him alone.

The feeling of loneliness, abandonment that wells up within him is enough to keep him awake for hours; once he sleeps, his nightmares come back, and the loneliness keeps him company in the aftermath.

\--

He has to tell Octavia the next day, and her mouth is a thin and angry line when he’s done. Lincoln sits next to her quietly, offers no counsel.

“What a coward,” Octavia hisses eventually. “Of course she wouldn’t come back and face up to her actions. Everything she’s done, all the lives she’s taken, and she’s just running. She put all of us, every single one of us in danger, but now she doesn’t have to deal with the fallout.” She spits to the side, and Bellamy sees, really sees how much she’s changed since they landed.

“O – “ he starts.

“Don’t ‘O’ me, Bellamy,” she says, looking at him sideways. “You don’t know half of what she’s done. You weren’t here to see.”

He sighs. “Here’s what I know. I know she killed someone she loved to secure an alliance to save our people. I know that it wrecked her, and maybe she made the right choice, but that would have damaged anyone. And then she kept going, trying to find ways to get our people released. And it took making horrible choices, because that’s what leaders do. It’s not black and white, Octavia, even though we always thought it was. What was right on the Ark isn’t what’s right down here.”

(he thinks, though, that maybe their actions aren’t so different from some choices the Ark made; he thinks the choices _Clarke_ made might be as ruthless as any the Council made, and he’s not sure when he started counting the distance between them, seems like it’s too early to be putting hard footsteps between them, but the loneliness yawns its wide mouth in his chest, and it seems like the only way to quiet it is to feed it.)

She looks at him, and he’s not sure if it’s scorn or pity on her face. “I can’t believe you’re defending her. She let an entire village burn while you were in the Mountain. She and Lexa knew about it, and they escaped rather than save their people.”

Bellamy feels his blood freeze. “She told me she would get there to stop it, to keep you safe,”

Octavia snorts. “I made it, and so did Lincoln, but hundreds of others didn’t, Bell. Her own _mother_ almost didn’t make it, because she was too selfish to do anything but run. That’s all she is – selfish.”

(he’s torn, and he doesn’t know if he agrees; he thinks about the look on her face when Finn kept telling her that he killed eighteen people for her, thinks about the shattered look on her face after she killed him, after they pulled the lever. she might be selfish, he thinks, but she’s also not trying to justify the horrible things she’s done, she’s not the constant reminder that horrible acts were carried out in the name of her people. he’s not sure what she is).

“Either way, she’s gone,” Lincoln says. “You are going to need to form some sort of new deal with the heda, now that she is gone, and I cannot help you there. Neither can Octavia. We are considered traitors.”

Bellamy frowns. “I don’t want to form a new alliance with them. We need allies who will stand with us, not run when it’s convenient for them.”

Lincoln inclines his head. “We’re going to need help during the winter nonetheless, and they are our best bet for that.”

Bellamy continues to frown, but he nods and gets up. “I’ll talk to the Council,” he says, and walks off.

When he looks back, Lincoln has his arm around Octavia, and he can see her muttering into his chest. Bellamy shakes his head. He doesn’t entirely understand their relationship, but Octavia is as happy as any of them, and he no longer begrudges the other man his role.

(Lincoln finds him later, tells him about Clarke shooting the sniper from Mt. Weather, about “you are my people”, tells him he thinks Lexa would have killed Octavia for the knowledge she has of the bombing but for a guess that Clarke talked Lexa out of it. Bellamy nods, moves on. he thinks about it the rest of the day, rolling it around in his mind, adding it to the pieces of Clarke he holds, no longer a clear and solid entity. he wonders when he last felt like he understood her, and if he ever really has.)

\--

When Lexa and her guards ride up to their gate two weeks later, Bellamy and several others are standing ready. She’d sent scouts three days ago, and it was to everyone’s surprise when they greeted not only Bellamy, but Abby, Kane, Octavia, and Lincoln with equal politeness.

(it put him immediately on edge, and after talking with Octavia and Lincoln, he thought it was rightly so).

When Lexa rides through the gates, her face is clear of the ashy makeup she wore before. She looks younger, and Bellamy thinks she looks vulnerable. He feels a stab of satisfaction at her position; her betrayal stings, and he can find no justification for it. Still, he knows that Clarke would try to be diplomatic, so he stands his ground, works on playing nicely.

They negotiate for several days, until Lexa agrees to trade with them; it’s less of a trade of goods, more of a compromise that she will see to it that they don’t starve during the winter if they provide medical help for those who have been drilled, if they help rehabilitate their kin among the Reapers, and if they stand alongside them if the clans turn on each other. 

Bellamy doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t have to. Clarke, the Clarke-before-she-killed-Finn is a steady and constant presence, almost as if she is in the room with him, and it is her voice that he uses when he agrees, not his own. He holds his in reserve, knowing he may need it later.

When they are done with negotiations, Lexa and he drink to seal their agreement. He feels like he has whiplash as he remembers the last time they broke bread together, but again he holds his tongue. It is when the others file out of the room that Lexa speaks directly to him for the first time.

“Belomi, I wish to speak to you,” she says, her voice as serious as always.

(he wonders if she laughs, if she smiles. she cannot be older than he is, but he has never seen a trace of joy on her face, and he’d say it’s for the difficulties of surviving on Earth, but he has seen Lincoln’s face alive with happiness, and he knows it’s not cultural.)

He wants to refuse, but he nods, gesturing for her to go ahead.

She looks down briefly. “I have not seen Klark.” When she meets his eyes, she looks very young.

“She isn’t here,” he says, a touch of brusqueness in his voice.

Lexa nods. “I – I am sorry for the way things were left, at the Mountain. It was not honorable.”

Bellamy frowns, weighs his words. Clarke’s voice seems to have abandoned him now, and he is just as sure of her absence as he is that she would find this exchange absurd.

(the loneliness stirs in his chest, even as he tamps down on it, forcing it back to his periphery.) 

When he finally speaks, he’s not sure of the words he’s about to say, but he pushes forward. “You betrayed our alliance. You left us to die. I’m not sure how letting us die is any less abominable than the acts we’ve carried out against your people. That was cause for war.” He looks at her now, and he gains surety as he watches her face. “I can’t forgive you. But we need to move forward. My people need to survive, and if an alliance with you is what it takes, that is what we will do.”

Lexa’s posture is stiff when he finishes, and her face is back to its unreadable mask. “I appreciate your honesty, Belomi kom Skaikru. Klark was right to trust you, it seems.” She turns and leaves at that, leaving Bellamy to wonder at her ambiguity.

\--

Two days after the Grounders leave, the first frost hardens the ground. Bellamy stands at the gate, marveling at the crystals on the ground when Lincoln walks up next to him.

“It will be a hard winter, for it to frost so soon,” he comments. Bellamy turns his head to look at him, but Lincoln continues to look out the gates.

“Is there anything we can do to prepare that we aren’t already doing?” he asks. 

Lincoln shakes his head. “Your alliance with the heda will be the best protection. It won’t help everyone.” His dark eyes meet Bellamy’s, and Bellamy’s gut turns.

“She made her decision,” he says, turning back and watching out the gate. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lincoln nod. He itches to ask the other man if he knows where Clarke is, but he promised to stay, he promised to watch over their people.

(even as he envies and resents her solitude, her ability to drift at will, he worries for her.)

\--

It’s before the first snowfall that he walks out the gate to go hunting and trips over stacks of sheets, blankets, clothes. Monroe is right next to him, peering over his shoulder.

“Where did these come from?” she asks.

Bellamy shakes his head. “The Mountain,” he says grimly. “Go get Miller, please. We need to get these moved inside, find someone to do a lot of washing.”

(for the first time, he thinks the monster in his chest, the one composed of loneliness, regret, and anger, is put to rest. he is alone, but she is here, and it’s not how he wants it, but her touch is all over this, and the relief pours through his veins at the thought of her proximity, even while he feels bitterness at her absence.)

It takes them a handful of minutes to get all the linens in, and he can see that Clarke included as many warm jackets as possible. He doesn’t know how she got it all moved in a single night, or what led to her retracing their steps back to the Mountain, but he knows it’s from her. It couldn’t be from anyone else.

When they’ve gotten it all to the Arkers on laundry duty that day, Miller turns to him with a raised eyebrow, and all he can do is shake his head.

(she’s atoning. that’s all he can guess. and if it helps them – well, they need all the help they can get. he hopes she’s taking as good care of herself as she is of them.)

\--

When it snows for the first time, the forty-six, along with Arker children, are out playing in the snow, and the sight of it simultaneously lightens Bellamy’s heart and makes him sigh. It’s gotten cold rapidly, and as beautiful as this first snow is, and even with the extra blankets from the Mountain, they are a long way from being warm. Too many people are still in tents when they could be inside the Ark, but the Council refuses to listen to his suggestions.

(he’s been attending Council meetings since the returned from Mt. Weather, and if he’s not an official member, they do stop talking long enough to let him speak, even if no one seems wiling to acknowledge the validity of his requests. it chafes at him, reminds him of being a janitor, and it’s these times that he feels Clarke’s hand on his shoulder, and instead of yelling, he breathes, tries again. he never stops working for the forty-six; the loneliness in his chest drives him to seek their forgiveness in his own way, even while no one seems to blame him outright. he’s not sure if he’s apologizing for the Mountain, for Clarke’s absence, or for his own mistakes, but it eases his feelings of loneliness to see Miller and Monty wrapped up in each other, Harper back on the wall with a gun, Monroe by her side, the others slowly healing and easing their way back to something like happiness.)

Miller eventually stomps into his tent, brushing snow off his hands and rubbing them together. “It’s getting colder. We should try and get everyone inside before it worsens.”

Bellamy nods, but gestures outside. “How, exactly, are we going to accomplish that?”

Miller grimaces. “Any luck with the Council?”

Bellamy shakes his head. As much help as Miller is with trying to help with the forty-six (he’s back to being the person Bellamy relies on consistently for day-to-day camp business, but Bellamy doesn’t feel entirely right, leaning on him. Miller’s recovering too, and more than that, he’s helping Monty, which Bellamy thinks is more important), Bellamy doesn’t really know what to ask him to do. He doesn’t feel like it’s fair to ask anyone else to help, even Octavia and Lincoln. He gives tasks to people, delegates, but he doesn’t ask anyone to help him share the burden of leadership.

(he can sometimes hear Clarke clicking her tongue in chastisement, sees her shaking her head and frowning at him, but he bats away this image of her, glares at the thought of her. she’s the reason he doesn’t have anyone to lean on, she doesn’t get to judge.)

When he finishes the guard rotation schedule, he hands it off to Miller. “Can you take this to your dad? I’ll try and get as many people as possible inside.”

Miller nods, and they head off in their separate directions.

Bellamy walks through camp, talking to groups and individuals, encouraging them to go inside, get some hot tea from the mess hall. Almost all of the forty-six do as he asks; all but one, really.

Jasper hasn’t spoken to him, Monty – or anyone, really, as far as Bellamy knows, since they got back. He has allowed Octavia to sit next to him in the mess hall, but Bellamy doesn’t think he’s spoken a single word. Now, he’s sitting near the gate, a jacket pulled tightly around his narrow frame, his eyes stuck on the white expanse outside the gate.

Bellamy touches him on the shoulder, and he flinches away, his eyes hard and angry when he meet’s Bellamy’s gaze. Bellamy sighs. “Jasper, you should come in. You’re going to get sick out here.”

Jasper doesn’t look away, and Bellamy sighs again. “Fine, but if you get sick, you don’t get to complain, because I told you this would happen.”

Old Jasper would have laughed, made a joke about Bellamy parenting him, would have done what Bellamy asked him the first time. New Jasper does neither of these things, and goes back to looking out at the landscape in front of him. Bellamy would sit and keep him company, but he doesn’t have the time, and he doesn’t particularly want to get sick either.

(getting sick means seeing Abby, and she’s the person he’s avoiding most of all.)

\--

People are getting sick left and right now that the snow lingers, and Bellamy is constantly trying to suppress his panic. They were exposed to cold viruses on the Ark, all of them, but the disease down here seem harsher, just like everything on Earth. They have no resistance, and he thinks back to historical texts of colonizers in the New World in their exact location and political position, and how when they first arrived, they died in droves. 

The didn’t have food, shelter, or immunity, and all he can think as he walks Harper to medical is that they are in exactly the same position. They have better medical technology, but all the technology in the world can’t save them when they don’t have antibiotics, when they’re adults fighting off diseases that the Grounders have been immune to since they were children.

He trades a guard shift with Miller one night to see Lincoln while he and Octavia are in camp. He’s not entirely sure where they go for days at a time, but they almost always come back with game, and they’re only just scraping by, even with help from the Trigedakru, so he doesn’t ask questions. 

He asks Lincoln as many questions about diseases as he can, takes dutiful notes. Abby probably won’t follow any of Lincoln’s suggestions, but at least they’ll have them if they get desperate.

He’s sleeping after this meeting when Miller shakes him awake. “You need to come to the gate,” he whispers, and that’s all Bellamy has to hear before he’s lacing his boots and shrugging on his jackets. He still doesn’t wear a hat, for all that he’s almost constantly cold. He doesn’t like the pressure on his head, doesn’t like remembering wearing a hat constantly when he infiltrated Mt. Weather.

When they get to the gate, Miller opens it silently, and when they walk out, Miller gestures in front of him. Bellamy grabs a torch from the archway, waves it over the dark pile. It’s meat, pounds and pounds of it, frozen and left where they can find it.

Bellamy looks over at Miller and frowns. “Is it poisoned? Could it be a trick?”

Miller shakes his head. “I think Clarke left it,” he says quietly.

Bellamy looks back at the ground in surprise. Leaving linens from Mt. Weather was one thing, but food – for her to bring down this much game, to move this much game, it means not only that she’s nearby, but that she must be doing well. She’s adapting, he realizes. She’s finding ways to exist in this lifestyle she’s chosen for herself, and she was a decent shot before, but she only left with a pistol. She’s devised new weapons for herself.

(she’s surviving, he thinks to himself, and he feels a small smile tugging at his lips, even as the ache in his chest grows. if she’s surviving, she might never want to come back, and he hates that he thinks of it that way, but he wants her _home_ , wants her physical presence with a sharp pang, wants her lips against his check again, her face buried in his neck, and he wants her guidance, her fierceness – he wants _her_ , and he wants her here, not somewhere in the ether. he also feels resentment coiled in his chest, that she can provide for them in a way that he can’t, that she could at least be doing it from within these walls, helping him from home.)

Tangled in his thoughts as he is, he almost forgets to ask. “Why do you think it’s Clarke?”

Miller shrugs. “Look at the footprints.”

Bellamy looks down, and they’re mostly dusted away, but there are one or two small footprints, and it could be anything, but he wants to believe it’s Clarke, wants it more than anything.

“What do we tell people?” Miller asks.

Bellamy pauses, thinking it over. “We can’t tell people we found it, they’ll be suspicious. And I don’t want people to think about going after Clarke again,” he says, sharing a look with Miller. They both know who he means when he says ‘people’. “We can tell people that I took it down, that I traded with you for the night shift so I could go out at night and try and hunt when animals were more vulnerable.”

Miller nods. “I don’t know if they’re going to believe you, but we can try.”

Raven, Octavia, and Lincoln look at them with some bemusement when they bring the meat in and try to sell that particular story, but they don’t ask questions, either, and nobody else does.

\--

It’s as more and more people get sick that Bellamy starts haranguing the Council about setting up quarantines, about bringing people into sharing space. No one seems to be listening to him until he looks Abby dead in the eye, says “You know this makes sense. You’re the doctor, how can you not think that setting up quarantines are a good idea?”

“Bellamy, we don’t have the manpower to enforce them,” she says tiredly, rubbing at her temples.

“People will enforce it themselves if you explain it to them,” he says sharply. “You still think that you need the guard to enforce everything, but down here, things are different. If you _talk_ to people, explain why the quarantines work, they’ll listen.” He looks her over. “Clarke would tell you that this is the right thing to do, and you know it.” It’s the last card he has up his sleeve, and he’s playing it. Too many people are getting sick. They lost three last week, and they had to burn them because the ground is frozen solid. It’s the worst the camp’s moral has been in months.

Kane looks between the two of them before sighing. “Abby, we need to try it. We’re going to have any number of problems if we don’t at least give it a try. Mr. Blake, what do you suggest for the quarantine areas?”

Bellamy sighs in relief, and they get to work.

(it’s a tiny step, he thinks, but it’s one of the most important ones they’ve taken.)

\--

Meat continues to appear at random throughout the winter, and whatever else Bellamy thinks of Clarke at this point, he never fails to send this thanks up to the sky that she’s trying to help them.

(the bitter parts of Bellamy still think that she could be helping them much more from inside the gates. she could have gone up against her mother about the quarantine issue, about using Grounder medicine, about a hundred things. he wouldn’t be so alone if she were here. he wouldn’t be the only one trying to patch up the forty-six, one person at a time, sewing over their wounds, internal and external, from the Mountain).

\--

The night that he sleeps through for the first time, doesn’t have to wake Harper up from a nightmare (part of quarantine involved moving more people into tents, to share heat; he’s now sharing with Monty, Miller, Harper, and Monroe), he feels like crying. He knows he should be laughing, filled with happiness, but all he feels is the weight of a thousand other sorrows and wounds pressing in on his heart.

(he still wakes up from his own nightmares sweating, his teeth clenched and grinding, his jaw sore. he dreams a thousand things: of becoming a Reaper, of watching Lincoln tear Octavia limb from limb in his drug-induced rage, seeing Clarke dead-eyed in the snow, arrows in her back. mostly, though, it’s the Mountain, little boys without fathers, being forced under the freezing showerhead, curled into a tiny ball in the cages.)

It’s after he goes hunting in a snowstorm that he and Monroe both go to the infirmary. Monroe coughed the entire way back, and in spite of the below freezing temperatures, he’s burning up. Abby takes one look at them from behind her mask and shuttles them to beds. There are few open beds; quarantine has helped stop the contagion, but it hasn’t put a halt to it entirely.

As she tucks blankets around Bellamy, lets him sip at water, she chides him. “You should know better than this, Bellamy Blake.” She fusses around him some more, and in spite of his distaste for Abby, he feels oddly reassured at her mothering him. Still, when he hears Monroe coughing, he gestures her away, tells her to take care of Monroe instead of him. The unimpressed eyeroll he gets over her mask is almost identical to those he received from Clarke, and it makes him smile through his discomfort.

He’s in quarantine for almost a week, and he can only hope that Miller is handling whatever might be transpiring in terms of Clarke. Octavia stops by, puts her hand up against the glass door, talks to him through Abby. Abby won’t let him out of bed yet, and for once, she and Octavia seem to agree.

He heals slowly, and Abby tells him that if he would slow down, stop taxing his body, he might heal faster. He brushes her off, goes back to his normal pace, and if he’s constantly tired, he doesn’t think about it.

(he sleeps dreamlessly for the first time after being sick, and he starts putting himself on an even more grueling pace to keep sleeping.)

\--

When the Grounders next visit, Echo comes with them, and the grin she gives him is fierce and biting. When they eat, she sits next to him, talks about how the winter is going. She tells him she is a visiting dignitary from the Azgeda, the Ice Clan, that her capture was a serious slight upon Lexa, as she had personally guaranteed Echo’s safety as a diplomat.

“It is possible, Belomi, that you saved her alliance with my heda,” she says, and her eyes are sharp, just like her smile. It makes Bellamy nervous, but he grins back, changes the subject.

She kisses him later, and he trails his hands up and down her sides, feeling the hard planes of her body. He knows now that women here aren’t soft; just like the men, they are hard edges, backbones of steel, sharp as knives. He thinks he’s playing with fire, and when Echo pulls away, he lets her.

She considers him. “Your heart is not in it, Belomi. It is a shame.” She walks away, her body moving lithely through the night, and he doesn’t stop to consider the ramifications of her words.

When she leaves the next day, her grin has lost none of its cunning, none of its edge. He assumes it means everything is unchanged between them, that she has no hard feelings toward him.

\--

The ground begins to thaw, and Monty begins to plant the first seeds gifted to them by the Trigedakru. It’s mostly lettuces, early plants that can survive another frost, but it is the first time they’ve tried planting anything on Earth, and Monty is clearly enthusiastic about his project. He’s enlisted the help of several others from Agro station, and Bellamy sees Miller walk by almost every day, stopping to talk with Monty, his head down and his smile obvious.

Bellamy doesn’t consider himself a true romantic, but he sees the connection between Monty and Miller, and it plants the first seeds of happiness in his chest. 

Still, they get another howling snowstorm, just as Lincoln predicted, and it forces them all inside. When the howling stops temporarily, he, Lincoln, and Octavia head out to hunt. Lincoln suggests that some animals will have come out of hibernation with the warm weather, and that this might be a good time to catch them out in the open. The each don their warmest clothing and packs, and slip through the gate. Theirs is a sanctioned hunt, but Lincoln warns that they could encounter more snow, and that they shouldn’t encourage others to move outside the walls.

They do get caught in more snow, but they also bring down a deer, and Bellamy can’t be too upset about the cold night spent out in the open, because it’s the first successful hunt he’s been on in months. Lincoln mentions that it should be the last snow of the season, and Bellamy feels relief trickling through his veins at the thought that the worst might be over.

(the worst of what, he’s not sure. the worst of winter, certainly, but it seems like an invitation to new beginnings, and he thinks that the thought of light and growth has seemed almost impossible up until now, and now – they’re going to make it, tooth and claw.)

When they get back, Raven is waiting for them, and she tugs Bellamy aside. “Clarke’s back,” she says.

His jaw drops, and for the first time in weeks, the loneliness latches its claws into his chest, bitterness burning through his veins.


End file.
